Knockout is a MVVM framework for javascript. It has been around for a while, but I never spent too much time with it until recently, when pluralsight released a free training that included knockout. My impressions – this is definitely something I could utilize in quite a few places, but it carries a pretty big startup cost, so I’d think hard before using it in a project.

Forms authentication has an option to use a web.config based authentication. One of the possible encryption algorithms is sha1. To calculate it, you can create a tool in c# (I even did that, but.. I lost it when my drive crashed) or you can use python.

I’ve used a few version control systems: visual source safe, subversion, git, mercurial and tfs. My current favourite – git. It it’s the most popular one at the moment, but to be honest there’s a good reason for that. It has a gigantic learning curve, but once you grok the concept, everything falls into place. My second choice – subversion. I’ve used it for a long time and it got the job done. The one I am using at the moment – tfs and here’s where the story starts.

Have you ever straggled with generating and polishing gradient for wpf in xaml? I did many times. Did you use any tool for that, except Visual Studio Property tab? I didn’t. Until I stumble upon Online Gradient Maker.